Anf-02 iv.ii.ii.xxxviii Pg 3.1
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxix Pg 42
Vel: or, “if you please;” indicating some uncertainty in the quotation. The passage is more like Jer. xv. 14 than anything in Isaiah (see, however, Isa. xxx. 27; 30).
by Isaiah, “A fire has been kindled in mine anger.” He cannot lie. If it is not He who uttered His voice out of even the burning bush, it can be of no importance4691 4691 Viderit.
what fire you insist upon being understood. Even if it be but figurative fire, yet, from the very fact that he takes from my element illustrations for His own sense, He is mine, because He uses what is mine. The similitude of fire must belong to Him who owns the reality thereof. But He will Himself best explain the quality of that fire which He mentioned, when He goes on to say, “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.”4692 4692
Anf-03 v.viii.xxvi Pg 14
Isa. li. 9, Sept.
that is to say, in that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of this kind of exhortation and invitation be suitable for that Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned those that were sent to them, and at last crucified its very Lord? Neither indeed is salvation promised to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the fashion of the whole world. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend that paradise is the holy land, which it may be possible to designate as the land of our first parents Adam and Eve, it will even then follow that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh, whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be recalled thereto just such as he was driven from it.